The Book Report
by nxstalgia
Summary: If Percy isn't a demigod, and neither is Annabeth, where could they ever meet? In Goode High School of course! It's a pretty fast story, I think. K for mild swearing. Happy endings are for suckers.
1. Mr Dionysus

1.

I tend not to notice when someone is calling me, wether I'm ignoring them or I am honest-to-god done with the crap I have to deal with for them. Naturally, I chose to snap only when it was Annabeth Chase that was tapping on the back of my shoulder. "What do you _want_?" I exclaimed frustratedly, turning around to face the most beautiful girl in my high school. She only smiled slightly, holding out my fallen pencil. "You dropped this, I think," she said. I took my pencil, and she went back to inspecting the floor for what I assumed was more fallen stationery.

"Thank you," I mumbled, but she didn't hear me. I thought Teddy was sitting behind me. Class ended, and a new one begun. Mr Dionysus, our literature (ahem) teacher handed out twenty-three copies of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, announcing our next book report, worth thirty percent of our grades, was based on this book. These copies were battered; borrowed from the school library each year. My copy had dents on the bottom of the yellowing cover page, but otherwise it was fine.

"Great Expectations, sir?" Annabeth asked, raising her hand slightly. Mr Dionysus nodded, this glasses wobbling slightly as he did so. "Is there a problem, Ms, ah, Chase?" he asked, and I silently urged Annabeth to keep her mouth shut. She didn't, which was another piece of the piling evidence I don't have superpowers. "You don't think that's beneath our level?" Her voice was slow and clear.

"I do not believe Charles Dickens is beneath your level, Ms Chase. Do be quiet."

"Sir, you've assigned us this book for two years in a row now. Isn't that right, sir?" she pressed. A bit more and Mr Dionysus would fail her. I knew that. The rest of the class knew that. But she did not. I made a split-second decision to intervene. Damn it.

I stood up, flashing Annabeth a sharp look. "What she means to say, Mr Dionysus, is that perhaps we could do something more elaborate? Shakespeare, perhaps?" there was a murmur of agreement. Mr Dionysus pondered this, before turning to the blackboard. That's right—we still use blackboards.

"Well, Mr Jackson, if you and Ms Chase are so desperate to defend each other like this-" he started, disregarding Annabeth's "I didn't defend him!". "You may, if you please, work together on this project," he told us, glaring through his glasses. I understood immediately: work together or fail together. Annabeth, however, had taken to stare at Mr Dionysus with her mouth agape.

"Sir," she said earnestly, looking between Mr Dionysus and I. _Help me Jackson._ "You can't pair us on something worth 30 percent of our grades!"

"I can and I did, Ms Chase. Please behave yourself and sit down," he said, before turning away from us again. And that was how I got Annabeth Chase as my partner for an assignment that didn't require partners. I should have just kept my head down. Annabeth was beautiful, sure, but I, alas, was not. Nothing good could come from someone high up on the social rankings of a mundane society of today's future "fraternising" with someone like me.

After class, Annabeth caught me by my locker. She looked—get this—_pissed._ "What was that for?" she demanded, slamming my locker shut. I said nothing, before taking her bony wrist between my index finger and thumb, and gently pushing it off my locker. I opened it again, stashing my books inside. "Jackson!" she exclaimed, her neck reddening slightly.

"I just saved 30 percent of your grades, _Chase_," I told her, putting on the straps of my bags. I continued before my confidence wavered. "Dionysus would've had your head hung. And I sort of don't want to see your head hung!" I said hotly, before adding, "I don't want anybody's head hung!"

She seemed to think about this, before shaking her head slightly. "You're going to regret ever 'saving' me. Let's get this over with then. I'll see you tonight."


	2. The Darn Diddly Deed

2.

She didn't have my number. Or address. Or my first name, I'd bet. But I sat in my bedroom waiting for my mother to yell at me to come down for the pretty girl. Should I warn her she was coming? At exactly 8.23, my mom called me to the door. Annabeth you marvelous creature. She wore a tanktop that hung loosely around her waist, and pajama pants.

"Come for a slumber party?" I asked. "Wrong house, I think."

"Aren't you going to invite me in?" she said. I gestured to the TV. "Well you're already in my living room," I said, and she managed a small smile. "Indeed I am," she nodded, before looking to my mom. "You have a lovely home, Mrs Jackson," she said, smiling widely. She beamed at her, nodding her head.

"Isn't it? Percy' father's father built it. And it's Sally, dear."

"Mom, this is Annabeth Chase," I introduced. Annabeth raised her eyebrow. "So you do know my name," she smirked, a dimple revealing itself on her right cheek. I scoffed. "We're going to do a book report for Mr Dionysus," I explained, but Annabeth pretended to look shocked. "And I thought we were going to do the diddly deed," she said, winking at my mother. She, my mother, laughed loudly, before letting us go upstairs.

Once we got upstairs, Annabeth made herself comfortable, spreading herself over my bed. God. "How much of the book have you read?" she asked, and I held up my copy. "None," I said. She sat up, her hair falling over the sides of her face. "Read it," she ordered. I read it. It took me two hours to reach what seemed like halfway through the book. "This isn't terrible," I concluded, and I looked up to find her already staring at me. "Of course not, it's Charles Dickens," she said. "And although I do not favor, among all writers and/or poets, the ones with stupid names like Dickens and Cummings, they are undeniably, as you say: _Not. Terrible._" I nodded, finishing the rest of the book.

"Final thoughts?" she asked. It was 10.47. "You should go home," I said. She glanced at my bedside digital alarm. "But your mom let me stay until we do the diddly deed, remember?" she teased, and I resisted the urge to smile. "She's probably gone back to school. Fridays' are always homework night," I said. She turned around, her hair flipping over the side of her face.

"She's a student?" she asked.

"Yes, and I'm proud to say she is."


	3. Mikey Way the Bassist

3.

"Mom, can Annabeth Chase stay until she feels like? We haven't finished the report yet."

"I'm kind of busy, Percy. You drive her home alright? Not too late," she said. Mother forgets I am underage. It is actually much more convenient that you'd expect. "Your room has horrible lighting," she said, once I put the phone down. I bit my lip, thinking of a snarky remark, and she raised an eyebrow at me. "Are you trying to look hot?" she asked. I felt myself go red. "Is it working?"

She smirked, before looking away. "Do you have speakers?" she asked. I shook my head. "We need to get this done so I can send you home." She looked around, before connecting her phone to my speakers. I sighed. "Okay," I said, "Obviously we are not going to work tonight." She pursed her lips, before playing Skinny Love by Bon Iver.

"Do you want to go home?"

"Not now."

"Do you want to work?"

"Not tonight."

This cycle repeated for several days, her music being the only thing that changed. Some nights, it was MGMT, or even the Smiths. But it was mostly Bon Iver. "You listen to actual music," I acknowledged one day, barely containing my smile as she sat down across from me in the cafeteria. She didn't smile, watching me carefully. "Yes," she said, before telling the 'nerds' to fuck off. "I have tickets to possibly the last concert My Chemical Romance will have." Her eyebrow was raised, as if it meant something to me.

"Their last?" I asked, abandoning my lunch. She only nodded, offering no explanation. "You're really predicting an MCR breakup? "

"Absolutely," she said, smiling slightly. "I'm psychic, you know."

"Psychic?"

"Oh, yeah."

"What does your psychicity saying right now?"

"That I will get you a dictionary and make you learn the noun of psychicism or whatever."

"You could spare me the shame and tell me right now."

"Alas," she said, sighing loudly. "I also do not know the noun of psychicness."

"Anyway."

"Anyway?"

"You were about to offer me a ticket to MCR's last concert?"

"Yes," she nodded, as if I were the one who proposed the tickets. "Come with me, Jackson. We will have fun in this rave-like performance of decent music. We will buy overpriced T-shirts and glowsticks and we will sneak backstage to meet them and I will kiss Mikey Way."

"Mikey Way the bassist?"

"Mikey Way the bassist indeed."

"Isn't he like 30?"

"Yes. Almost twice our age, Jackson."


	4. Chapter 4 (Untitled)

**Author's Note: Shorter chapters coming, I'm afraid. I have school and what not. I always forget the disclaimer, but I think it's safe to say no one expects me to be the owner of these lovely characters. **

4.

Mr Dionysus was reading aloud a few pages of A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. Annabeth was chewing on her pencil, probably not listening. I doodled on the margins of my notebook. Except I can't draw, so I settled for writing interesting words in incredibly annoying fonts. "Your book reports are due next week," he reminded us. "Please do not disappoint me."

Disappointment is the manifestation of building up all your expectations. It's like telling your archenemy where your Achilles Heel is and expecting him or her not to stab it. (S/he'd stab it.) Anyway. "Your turn to come to my place tonight," Annabeth whispered in my ear, before the ball rang, right on cue, and she made her exit.

I called my mom at work. She seemed frazzled. "What is it?" she asked. Never a hello, but that was how we worked. "I need to go to Annabeth Chase's house tonight," I said, and there was silence. "Okay," she said. I smiled slightly. "Thank you. I'll wait up." The rest of the day went by uneventfully, until Annabeth Chase—get this—sat at my lunch table.

"Hello nerds," she greeted my friends, before taking a seat next to me. They stared. And stared. And stared. Until she glared them down. And they went back to their cafeteria food. "So hey," she said, swinging a leg over the bench so she could face me. "I am having a party in two nights. And I need you to be there, you know? I kind of need emotional stability."

"And who's more emotionally stable than a guy who hangs out with Annabeth Chase?" I joked.

"Exactly! You'll come, yes? Party starts at eight. Be there at like, five or six, if you want to do the report or do the darn undone diddly deed." She was smiling slightly, and I detected a slight glimmer of hope in her eyes. "You have a bad habit of inviting me places, Annabeth Chase."

"I know. I'm young, and lonely. Sort of. And so are you," she stood up, placing a hand gently on my shoulder before leaving.


	5. Annabeth Chase's Party

5.

I got to her house at four. "You're early," she noticed, raising her eyebrow. I nodded, smiling slightly. "Oh yes, and needily so. It is like, four hours until your shin-dig. May I come in?" I asked, grinning slightly. Her bedroom was bright with industrial lighting and white walls with writing on them. I couldn't tell you what the writing was because there wasn't a word I understood.

"Is this where you get your massive vocabulary?" I asked, pointing at the ceiling. She crossed her arms, but it seemed like she was trying to squeeze her the contents of her stomach out.

"Don't say massive," she said, sounding defensively. "That makes me feel big."

"You are big," I said. Only after it escaped my lips did I realize how that sounded. "No. You're not, like, big. You are perfectly—uhm. You're good." She laughed at me, before gesturing to her walls. "These are all the words I've found and do not understand. Most of them are in US or Oxford English. Which feels ironic."

I took a seat on the corner of her bed, before holding up my novel. "Are we doing this or not?" She looked at me skeptically, pressing her lips together.

"Percy, dear god, Percy. Don't you like me?" she asked.

I flinched slightly, putting the novel down."I have been to your house and you have been to my house multiple times, despite your having a boyfriend. It should make me wonder," I mumbled. "But no, I suppose I don't. You're too much you and I'm too... well, me." _But yes, gods, Chase. I like you._

The party started when Luke Castellan, Annabeth's boyfriend, arrived. He looked me over once, before the edge of his nose flicked up in an ugly sneer. "You invited your literature partner?" he asked, smirking at me. She pouted slightly. I thought this made her look... Vacuous. Dim-witted. Stupid. Not-my-literature-partner. I excused myself to the bathroom, which, conveniently, was on the second floor, where nobody was. I didn't understand my purpose here; I was a scrawny nerd who just happened to get lucky enough to sit in front of Annabeth Chase. I wasn't anything like Luke. Or even Annabeth.

I entered Annabeth Chase's room. Hopefully that was okay. I threw myself onto the couch, before picking up her copy of The Fellowship of the Ring, which happened to be, like, crap. A novel with (alas) amazing but poorly delivered content. It wasn't personal; the book was just torturously slow.

I briefly considered going home. I wasn't needed here, and everyone, gods, e_veryone _knows I like to feel needed. Who doesn't? The heart-swelling euphoria of hearing someone ask for you. I am painfully addicted to attention I never get.

It feels like withdrawal. (I assume.)


	6. But What About Mikey Way?

6.

I was disturbed at around eleven, when Annabeth burst in her room. Her face was lined with tears, and mine with imprints of the couch pattern. (Two types of people, I guess.) She was sobbing. Not hysterically. Just sobbing. She was sat on her bed, with her hand over her mouth, letting her tears fall. I shifted to make my prescence known. I guess that backfired, because the couch made this horrible farting sound. She didn't even look up.

"Chase?" I asked, kneeling in front of her. She closed her eyes.

"I thought we were already on a first name basis," she teased. Her voice was pained, but she was smiling. Her eyes finally met mine. "How are you feeling?" I asked. She smiled slightly, and I realized I had never made her laugh."I am," she said, before pressing her forehead to mine, "so irritatingly, painfully human."

"Oh, undoubtedly so," I agreed, wiping her tears with my thumb. "Now, if you're ready, let's go have fun in a rave-like performance of decent music, where we will buy overpriced T-shirts and glowsticks and we will sneak backstage to meet MCR and perhaps _I_ will kiss Mikey Way for you.

The concert was loud, full of strangers jumping around wearing all sorts of band merchandise. She was holding my hand, a grin spreading across her face. It was 3 in the morning, and I forgot to tell mom I would be home extremely late. But for the first time in a long time, _this was exactly where I knew I should be_. In all honesty, I had fun with Annabeth Chase. Fun I hadn't had in a while. An hour before the concert was supposed to end, Annabeth started tugging on my arm.

"Let's go backstage now," she said loudly into my ear, and I nodded at her. Her eyes looked dark, despite the flashing lights. They reminded me of a solar eclipse, or a blackhole. Something big and rare. Something so much like her it became her. We left the stadium and and went around the back, where Annabeth greeted her cousin. They bore a striking resemblance to one another: full eyebrows, a long nose and high cheekbones. But her cousin, Thalia, seemed older. More regal-looking. "Is this the Percy you told me you'd bring?" she asked, frowning disapprovingly. Annabeth didn't look at me. "Yes, dear cousin," she said, a hand gripping mine tightly. "This is Perseus. Percy, Fiona. Fiona, Percy."

Despite the obvious distaste she felt for me, Thalia Grace let us backstage, telling us the band will be in the break room in half an hour. "Your cousin seems nice," I muttered, letting Annabeth Chase's hand drop. She didn't answer. Her hair was a mess; strands of hair tangled and interlocked with one another. Her eyes were wide with alarm. "Oh my gods," she said, pronouncing each word slowly. "Percy! Jackson! Percy! Gods—we forgot the book report! Why am I so freaking _human_?!"

And without another word, Annabeth Chase dragged me back to my car, and we drove home.


	7. Finally Finished

7.

As I rifled though online blogs dedicated to book reviews, I thought about Annabeth's ill-felt mortality repulsion. Being able to feel pain isn't unfortunate. It is the one gift we have to recieve; the dosage of reality that reminds us of our place. No man should ever not feel pain. The cruel truth of it is that pain is necessary, wether temporary or permanent.

"I am on paragraph two of our book report," she told me. "Exactly how many do we need?"

"As much as it would take to please Mr Dionysus," I said soberly.

"Did you bring a toothbrush, then?"

At exactly two in the morning, Annabeth sent me the draft for me to finalise. The first four paragraphs were our opinions on his writing style and a basic summary of the book. What we loved, and what we would change. But there, on the bottom of the page, she wrote her bit:

_What was the moral of the story? For what purpose did you force, upon us, this amazing piece of literature? It's actually come to my attention my copy is of the revised edition, with that horribly untruthful ending. The un-truth. (It's a story, Mr Dionysus, and there is never deceit in a story written by a man with a brilliant mind.) The un-truth; the gray between the truth and lie. And that's what this ending was like. Estella wasn't supposed to end up with Pip. This is the biggest tragedy I am facing, among several painful others. Why have you done this to me? Only in these rewritten books, ever, would we find the main character gets what he wants. This un-truth is the biggest un-truth my days have brought upon me, and I am maddeningly disappointed its benefactor is you. Cowardice! Cowardice of the painful actuality of the situation. My dear, dear partner Percy Jackson will now have to live his life with the un-truth. How cruel. How cruel. Estella should have died in a ripe age, not with Pip, but (the) doctor. She should have been left to rot with the doctor. Pip, dear boy, wouldn't have had a prosperous life, had the story not be rewritten, but he would have had an honest, albeit fictional life. _

"Well," I smiled sideways, "At least it doesn't lack that dramatic flare Mr Dionysus begged for."

She looked at me. She tilted her head slightly and looked at me. She stared at me. I was vaguely reminded of a lioness crouching, prepared to pounce on her pray. "Percy, dear, Percy. Did you even read my ending?" she asked, and I shook my head slightly. "My god, Chase, I didn't just read your ending. I fucking believed in your ending." She smiled at me, before crawling onto her bed.

"So," she yawned, "we actually finished the book report." I watched her carefully.

"Yes."

"But we still have not," she paused, "done the darn diddly deed."

"No."

"Good thing too," she yawned again, "I'm drunk and newly single and you're not drunk and-"

"I can let myself out, Annabeth Chase," I promised. She fell asleep immediately. I took her copy of Great Expectations and scribbled on the back page:

_love is pain, but even and especially when we have nothing, pain is something we never lose._


	8. What is Love?

8.

Annabeth was not present at school for the submission of her glorious rant. Which was fine. Now that the book report was done, she had no immediate use for me. Which was fine. Annabeth's boyfriend has taken to calling me retarded. Which was not fine, because who uses a mental illness for an insult? Not the retarded.

That was how my day started: an absence in the crossroads of beautiful, unintelligent socialites and scrawny, dangerously snarky nerds: Annabeth Chase. Without anything to look forward to in literature, I began writing the paragraph Mr Dionysus wanted on—get this—love.

_Love is something you cannot know you feel until you lose it. And losing it, dear god. It hurts. I once met this girl. I saw her in my dreams and fears, I saw her in everything I loved; I saw her in the books I read and the stories I'd write. I'd taste her in the alcohol, and the bittersweet cigarette smoke I exhale. I saw her in the beauitful mornings and the lonely nights as well. I saw her in the clouds and constellations, I did. When I lost her, it felt as if I'd lost her to the stars. _

I read it all over once, before crumpling up my paragraph and tossing it in my bag. That barely covered what I thought love was. But I was 16. What could I have possibly known about love? Love was—love is—desparately, maddeningly unexplainable.


	9. Love In It's Purest

_La douleur exquise; an untranslatable french saying. It expresses the unimaginable pain of wanting someone you cannot have. This is the actuality of love, old man: suffering. As little or much sense as that made, I write this down in a vain attempt to string together a melodius sonnet from the thoughts of a shattered mind. I am trying, rather hopelessly, to express love in it's most beautiful and indescript form. I have been trying to reach the light I've found in my infinite void, and the best I can do is feel it's warmth on my fingertips._

_This is love, old man._

_This is suffering._


	10. Ruin Lives

10.

"Percy?" she called, poking my shoulder gently. I turned to face her. She had eyebags. "What did you mean when you called me _big_?"

"I meant you're _big_, Annabeth. I'm not even a star in your constellation, I'm a star in your freaking universe," I said. She nodded, though she didn't seem satisfied.

"How are you?" I asked, once her attention was on Mr Dionysus.

"Alive," she murmured, "in a matter of speaking."

"Same," I grinned, and she managed a small smile. I turned back to the front, right as Mr Dionysus handed me my paragraph back. "It's my second favourite," he told me, smiling slightly.

"Percy?" Annabeth called again, and I looked at her. "Did you _really_ call my party a shin-dig?"

The next time I saw Annabeth, she was sitting next to me at lunch again. Then she told the nerds to fuck off. "Do you ever feel like you want to be remembered? Like you want your life to mean something?" she asked softly.

"Never," I said seriously, and she managed a smile.

"I do too. Like, I want to be remembered. Fuck, no. I want to ruin lives. I want to ruin lives with the heart-wrenching torture of best friends parting ways. I want to drag the soul out of a body. I want someone to keep remembering me. I know I won't be forever. Nobody's going to remember Gandhi forever, if forever exists. But I want to be remembered for as long as a lifetime after mine, you know?"

"Sort of." Where was she going with this?

"I want to ruin your life, Jackson. I want the bittersweet knowledge that you're going to remember me long after I'm not here. I want to ruin the life of someone I love," she whispered.

"So just un-love me."

She laughed. It was the first laugh out her mouth in days. "I don't love you, Jackson."

"Understandable."

"But I do feel something," she said. "Enough to know I could never ruin your life, much as I have my life goals and all that crap."

"I don't understand."

"I might just love you, Jackson. But it's the un-truth. It's like a freaking paradox in my mind and I can't stop thinking about you and I can't stop needing you in my life and I can't stop thinking if I tell you this, I will eventually ruin your life."

"Too late, isn't it?" I smiled.

"I will not ruin your life, Percy," she murmured in my ear. I pressed my paragraph into her hand, ignoring the looks form students around us.

"My dear Annabeth Chase, you wouldn't just ruin my life; you would utterly demolish my livelihood. And it will be the Greatest Expectation my mind will ever face."


	11. Truth

11.

She stopped talking to me completely after that day. I could have moved to San Fransisco, for all she cared. I probably don't love her. I probably exaggerated a lot in my head, when in reality, we were just partners for a school project that lasted a week. She probably won't remember me. She had, in her own maniacally twisted way, ruined my life.

"Mr Dionysus?" I called, and he answered me lazily from his desk. "Was it Annabeth Chase's paragraph that beat mine?" He looked up, smiling widely. "Why yes, Percy Jackson, it was!" He reached into his drawer, before pulling out a piece of scrap paper. "Tell me, Percy, you have returned your book, right? I seem to be missing one." It was scrawled lazily, in handwriting I recognised distinctly as my own.

_love is pain,_ _but even and especially when we have nothing, pain is something we never lose._


	12. AUTHORS NOTE

**i'm not as proud of this as i am proud of the ones i haven't posted. if anyone is reading this, review or pm for the second fanfic i wrote. i know the story is fast like hell, but i am in a rush. i love you guys. keep on keeping on.**


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